Investors spent much of the second quarter bracing for an energy shock and fretting over an AI bubble. Corporate earnings have delivered the opposite story so far, with a profit surge running roughly twice as strong as Wall Street expected.
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Oppenheimer reports that 306 S&P 500 companies, or 61% of the index, had posted results through July 31, according to Oppenheimer’s market strategy note.
Combined earnings rose 57% from a year earlier, more than double the 23.6% growth rate FactSet analysts had projected heading into the season. Revenue climbed about 15%, and 86% of reporting companies beat earnings estimates.
Strength Across Every Corner of the Market
All 11 S&P 500 sectors posted year-over-year earnings growth, and 10 grew at double-digit rates or faster. Energy, consumer discretionary, and communication services each more than doubled their earnings, a pace few strategists anticipated when the reporting season opened.
Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) delivered one of the season’s biggest headline beats. The company reported diluted earnings per share of $9.11 against a consensus estimate near $2.88, alongside revenue of $119.8 billion, up 24% year-over-year and above the roughly $116.9 billion analysts had modeled.
Google Cloud revenue jumped 82%, underscoring continued demand for the company’s AI infrastructure. A large portion of the EPS figure reflected a roughly $99 billion unrealized gain on equity holdings, so the underlying operating profit beat was narrower than the headline number suggests — still a beat, just not quite as dramatic as it first appears.
Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) became the latest name to catch the market off guard. The data-analytics firm posted adjusted earnings of 41 cents per share, topping the 34-cent estimate, on revenue of $1.94 billion versus the $1.81 billion consensus.
Revenue grew 93% year-over-year, its fastest pace ever, with U.S. commercial revenue surging 149%. Management raised full-year guidance and projected at least 134% growth in U.S. commercial revenue, citing accelerating demand for sovereign AI deployments.
Combined, these results suggest corporate America is absorbing higher energy costs and AI capital-spending fears far better than markets priced in just weeks ago.
PLTR Stock Price Activity: Palantir stock was up 20.45% at $151.35 at the time of publication Tuesday, according to data from Benzinga Pro.
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